Addressing Hunger in Central America

4 ways USAID promotes food security in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras

USAID is helping Honduran farmers adapt to challenges like prolonged drought, flooding, and lack of crop variety that have led to food insecurity in the Dry Corridor of Honduras. / USAID

Hunger in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has become a growing concern in recent years. According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, up to 5.5 million people are in need of food assistance across the three countries.

The challenge has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s devastating hurricanes, Eta and Iota. Due to lost income and fewer job opportunities, vulnerable households can’t afford to buy enough food for their families. These compounding issues, among other factors, have led many to make the dangerous journey migrating irregularly to the U.S.

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, USAID is addressing food insecurity so citizens can build a better future for themselves and their families in their home countries. Our efforts include emergency food and nutrition assistance, economic recovery programs, and agriculture production to support sustainable food systems.

Community members farming together in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. / USAID

USAID recognizes that each country’s unique context requires a tailored set of programs to adequately address this challenge. Here are some of the ways our work is tackling food insecurity in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras:

1. Crop diversification: With USAID’s support, over 1,500 farmers in the Western Highlands of Guatemala have added Hass avocados to their farms to increase their incomes from selling this in-demand crop. Every year, the Feed the Future project PRO-INNOVA launches a program where every farmer who buys a new avocado plant receives a second one donated by Popoyán, a Guatemalan agribusiness. Since 2018, Popoyán and partner farmers have planted about 263 hectares of avocado trees. For the group of 1,500 producers, the first and second year of avocado harvest brought in over $4 million in sales. Increasing smallholder farmers’ income ensures they can put food on their families’ tables.
2. Transforming Market Systems: In 2019, with support from USAID, JJ Agro became the largest producer of hydroponic strawberries in Honduras, with over 1 million pounds of product and $2 million in annual sales. This year, USAID brokered an alliance between JJ Agro and another agro-processing firm, ESSAN, to process JJ Agro’s strawberries that don’t meet client’s size standards into concentrate. Since the partnership began, JJ Agro has brought in $10,000 in new income and is projected to earn $400,000 in additional annual sales. For ESSAN, the new partnership has yielded an 83 percent increase in monthly sales, allowing the firm to hire 10 new full-time employees ― all women — demonstrating the lasting impact of USAID’s programs.
3. Nutrition Sensitive Approach: In Guatemala, USAID’s Coffee Value Chains Project under the Feed the Future initiative not only helps coffee farmers improve the quality of their beans; it also helps them start producing chicken and eggs to eat and sell. In the last year, coffee farmers’ families have produced over 4 million eggs and 19 thousand pounds of chicken, valued at $590,000. This holistic approach both improves the families’ nutrition and gives them an additional revenue stream beyond their coffee farms.
4. Training and Research: In El Salvador, USAID supports research into drought-tolerant crops and monitoring and evaluation of these efforts. In the western part of the country, USAID is helping 1,000 vulnerable farming families learn water-smart agriculture. This empowers families to increase crop production and enhances community resilience to droughts and extreme rainfall.

USAID is helping Central Americans mitigate and adapt to prolonged drought, flooding, and lack of crop variety have caused high levels of food insecurity. / USAID

In addition to these food security projects, USAID has provided more than $125 million in humanitarian assistance in the three countries since April, a month that was particularly hard on vulnerable households. Of this, nearly a third is emergency food assistance aimed at reaching 364,000 people. This includes cash assistance for people to purchase food at local markets, and food vouchers to ensure people have enough to eat, preventing and addressing malnutrition among food-insecure households.

USAID continues to be laser-focused on helping the people of the region to lead healthier, more prosperous lives in their home communities.

About the Author

Jessica Brown is an Outreach and Communications Specialist in USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean.